Chapter 3

The deed was exactly where Sarah had left it, tucked into the front pocket of her leather tote bag, folded in thirds, the paper soft from being handled. She pulled it out as the elevator descended, smoothing it flat against her palm.

It was not, as Richard believed, a contract. It was not the document he had been looking for, the one he thought his mother had hidden in her apartment, the one he had convinced himself Sarah had stolen to use against him.

It was the deed to the apartment itself. The apartment her father had bought and given to Richard's mother as a wedding gift. The apartment Richard had believed was his mother's, then his own after she died, then his to hold over Sarah's head like a threat.

The deed had been transferred into the trust years ago. The signature on the bottom was Richard's own.

The Scotsdale Apartments. Unit 14B. A two-bedroom on the sixteenth floor of a pre-war building on the south side of the Loop, a building her father had bought in the 1990s as an investment, a building that had appreciated in value a dozen times over. The apartment had been Richard's mother's for eleven years before she died. Richard had inherited it. He had never once checked the deed. He had never once looked at the transfer documents his own lawyer had prepared, the ones he had signed without reading, the ones Sarah had placed in his file with the rest of the paperwork she had quietly managed for him.

Mrs. Gao watched her from across the width of the elevator. "The office key," she said.

Sarah turned the deed over in her hands. "It's on the same ring. He's been carrying it for years. He thinks it's the apartment key. He's never once used it to unlock the office door because he has a different key for that, the one in his wallet, the one he's had since he took the office after my father died."

"And the apartment key?" Mrs. Gao asked.

"On the same ring. Two keys. He never noticed the difference. They look almost identical. The apartment key is slightly longer, slightly wider at the head. The office key is the one I need."

The elevator doors opened onto the lobby: marble floors, a security desk with a guard who looked up as they passed, a revolving door that spun slowly in the late-afternoon light. Sarah walked through it without breaking stride, the deed folded and returned to her tote bag, the keys warm in her pocket.

The street outside was wet with rain, the pavement reflecting the amber glow of streetlights that had just begun to flicker on. Taxis hissed past, their tires throwing up spray. Sarah stopped at the curb and turned to Mrs. Gao.

"You know what I'm going to do," she said.

"I have some idea."

"I'm going to walk into that building, take the elevator to the sixteenth floor, and unlock the door to the apartment. I'm going to open every drawer, every cabinet, every safe. I'm going to find everything I know is in there. And then I'm going to call Richard and tell him the task is done."

Mrs. Gao's dark eyes were unreadable. "And then?"

"Then I'm going to come back here, take the other key, walk into his office, and sit down in his chair."

"You're not going to tell him."

"Not yet. He thinks he's won. He thinks he's humiliated me in front of the people who matter. He thinks I'm going to crawl back tonight with the deed and beg him to forgive me." Sarah smiled, a small, tight expression that did not reach her eyes. "Let him think that. For now."

The rain was beginning to fall harder, the first drops collecting in her hair, running down her cheeks, washing the last traces of blood from her face. She pulled her tote bag closer against her body and stepped off the curb, raising her hand to hail a cab.

---

The cab dropped her on Wabash Avenue, and Sarah walked up the steps of the Scotsdale Apartments alone, without looking back.

She crossed the lobby slowly, giving the doorman a small nod as she passed. The elevator creaked upward, and the silence of the building settled around her, thick as dust. She stepped out onto the sixteenth floor, walked down the narrow hall, and stopped at the door that had once belonged to Richard's mother.

The lock clicked open as smooth as water. That was the trick—the old woman's locks were the same as they had been thirty years ago, while the ones that mattered had all been changed. Sarah had always felt a strange tenderness for that peeling door frame, the way the numbers of 14B had been painted over so many times they had almost lost their shape.

She stepped inside, and the door eased shut behind her, sealing her into the cemetery quiet of Richard's mother's life.

Sarah did not turn on the overhead light. Enough gray afternoon leaked through the dust-filmed windows for her to find her way to the kitchen, where she pulled out a chair and sat at the small wooden table that had never seated more than two people. She put her tote bag in her lap and listened to the refrigerator hum.